


That the Beating of Your Heart Should Kill No One

by Itgoeson



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Amortentia, M/M, Marauders' Era, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 00:19:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4856102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itgoeson/pseuds/Itgoeson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sirius dislikes love potions, Remus dislikes things that make Sirius unhappy, there is a lot unsaid, and there are entirely too little of a lot of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That the Beating of Your Heart Should Kill No One

**Author's Note:**

> First post! Exciting stuff. Sleep deprivation makes me do strange things, like write this and actually give it out to the internet at large. The title is from an Alice Walker poem called "Love is Not Concerned," which I highly recommend. Thank you, and happy reading.

The Potions room was humid, air and heavier sticking to their skin as they filed in and paired off. Remus sprawled next to Peter, more out of solidarity than anything else. James and Sirius didn’t have an inclination towards Potions, making them more prone to plotting than passing the class by more than sheer luck and possibly a deal with the devil, and after a semester of being paired with Sirius their first year, Peter had nearly thrown a cauldron at his head. 

(Not that Remus blamed him. He just wished he’d gone through with it, a bit.)

Sirius had thus been forced to sit squarely in the middle of the second row, directly behind Marlene and Lily. James was already chatting with the two, while Sirius was tipped back in his chair, practicing his vacantly broody stare, shoulders in a forced slouch. Remus considered being embarrassed that he noticed before giving it up as a lost cause.

It wasn’t until Slughorn motioned the class forward to look at the potion he has sitting on a low table in the front of the room that Remus noticed Sirius’ carefully still hands, the way his eyes had yet to focus on anything even while he was half-turned to listen to James’ story.

“Amortentia is the most powerful love potion you’ll ever see – or smell,” Slughorn began. Remus’ stomach clenched, his rib cage suddenly too tight against his lungs. Out of the corner of his eye, Remus saw Sirius’ body relax, shoulders bending forward as he laughed at whatever James had said, before turning to ask Lily something that made her laugh in turn as they shuffled up to smell the clear potion. 

James and Lily had gone bright red after taking their turns smelling the potion; Marlene smiled wistfully; Sirius looked unsurprised, shrugging slightly at Remus and Peter when he saw them looking.

In front of him, James was still talking, occasionally leaning over the desk to ask Lily a question while Sirius smiled absently and read out directions. For a while after that, all Remus could think of was making the potion 

When Sirius got up and left, leaving his bag and books – ostensibly to go to the bathroom – Remus mentally shrugged and went back to stirring the contents of their cauldron clockwise while Peter diced Frog’s Foot. James, finishing the last stir in his cauldron, turned around and raised an eyebrow. No one could sense when Sirius was having Real Boy Emotions, and not just amiably putting on a show for whoever was watching, quite like James. Remus shrugged and looked at Peter, who snorted and raised another eyebrow, tilting his head towards the door. 

“Someone has to make sure we don’t fail this class,” Peter said, James nodding apologetically, like Remus wasn’t usually the one to drag Sirius back to class when he’d decided he was bored, or, more likely, to curl up near or on Sirius to take a nap while Sirius did whatever it was Sirius felt like doing that day. (Occasionally, Sirius would turn into Padfoot after Remus had dozed off, leaving him exasperated at the layer of dog hair clinging to his white shirt and at the large weight settled on his chest when he woke up. They didn’t talk about it, and definitely didn’t mention it to Peter or James and Remus was not always sure what to do about that other than to assume that it was just a Thing between him and Sirius.)

Remus smiled, because today was definitely a day for ditching, with James’ lovestruck smile and Lily’s low-level, maybe-permanent blush in front, and Peter’s tight lips when it came to what the potion had smelled like to him. 

Remus scrambled for the door, leaving his things, too. Slughorn would be more willing to believe they’d gotten waylaid by Peeves, and missing the rest of class had been avoidable. James and Peter would bring it all back to their room, anyway. By the time he made it out the door, Sirius’ footsteps were faint and distant. Remus jogged to catch up. It was even odds that he’d go back the Gryffindor Tower to pick up the invisibility cloak as it was that he’d head straight for the Forbidden Forest and wonder there for hours until he got distracted by bright flowers or a climbable tree. 

A side door slammed open ahead. The Forbidden Forest it was, Remus thought, catching the door before it closed entirely. After a few paces he was walking shoulder-to-shoulder with an unmistakably furious Sirius. If he couldn’t stop making that face, it was no wonder Sirius had slunk out of class. 

Sirius was always so hesitant to be angry. Remus thought it was less odd the older they got – he didn’t like to give people an impression other than the one he’d cultivated for years, carefree and happy. It hadn’t occurred to Remus until near the end of their second year that no one but the Marauders knew there were nights he’d only sleep in snatches sitting by the window, or there were days he had to be persuaded out of the bathroom after changing three times and buffing his nails and fixing his hair until his breathing was shallow and he couldn’t look them in the eyes. 

Remus kept pace silently.

When they swept past the first gnarled trees, Sirius sighed. “The potion is bullshit.”

Remus tried not to flinch. It hadn’t smelled all that different that what he could smell at the moment. He tried not to think of what it had smelled like for Sirius. 

“Okay,” he said after another ten feet of silence.

Sirius huffed. “It’s fucking bullshit. You can’t make someone love someone. You can’t expect that that’s . . . that’s never going to work well. You can’t ever –” He swallowed hard, exhaled sharply. 

Ah. That made a bit more sense. Remus tried not to show his relief. He was so certain that Sirius would have smelled – well. It was hardly the time to focus on that. 

“Well, no.”

“Fount of wisdom, you are.”

Remus shrugged, grabbing for a leaf overhead that was prematurely yellowing, snapping it off the tree and handing it over to Sirius. He really was the most delightfully odd person Remus had ever met, because he looked, for all of a minute, as though it were Christmas, and this leaf was the epitome of the Christmas spirit. 

“I’m so tired of my family fucking everything up,” he admitted quietly.

Digging into the inner pockets of his robe, Remus made a quiet nose of triumph before handing over a slightly crushed chocolate frog. Sirius carefully tucked the leaf into his pocket before tearing open the wrapper and splitting the frog with him.

He grinned, and Remus fell a little bit more in love at the way it only curled over one side of his mouth, the way his eyes squeezed just a bit tighter. A smiling Sirius was a stronger physical pull than a full moon, and Remus really ought to have some sort of award for most domesticated werewolf by now. 

But the light filtering down through the leaves made Sirius look less exhausted than either of them had been in years, and the wind had been just strong enough to tussle his hair and Remus couldn’t resist slowly bringing a hand up to tuck a strand behind his ear, giving Sirius plenty of time to duck or twitch, and scratched through the hair at the back of his head the way Sirius adored as Padfoot. 

A second later Remus nearly had the breath nocked out of him as Sirius aggressively demonstrated his best octopus impression, breath warm against his collarbone and hand gripping his robes tightly like Sirius only knew how to hug like an argument.

Remus buried his nose in Sirius’ hair, relaxing, bringing his arms up to hold Sirius. He wasn’t crying, not exactly, but it felt like maybe he was winding down from wanting to. 

The sun was still shining, creating a faint glow even with his eyes shut, and the wind was still just barely rustling the leaves, and Sirius was wound around Remus as much as Remus was around him, and amortentia, Remus thought, could never begin to compare to the feeling of Sirius tilting his head up, nose brushing briefly against his jaw.

Remus drew back the slightest bit to give him room, stubbornly refusing to move his arms unless Sirius moved first. Instead, he smiled faintly, dark eyes sparkling with a kind of certainty that made Remus breathless. 

Remus smiled back before kissing him. 

“Fuck amortentia anyways,” he muttered, waiting for Sirius to stop snickering before kissing him again.

**Author's Note:**

> First post! Exciting stuff. Sleep deprivation makes me do strange things, like write this and actually give it out to the internet at large. The title is from an Alice Walker poem called "Love is Not Concerned," which I highly recommend. Happy reading.


End file.
